The techno-social environment
Both top down and bottom up narrative creation happens across media and social media today, and the influencer sits in the middle of the action.
Invisible Rulers
In short, the architecture of digital platforms has made us obsessive documenters and consumers of the present, yet largely indifferent to the archives we create.
Adam Grant • Check Your Pulse #55
Increasingly our tech also opens us up to new vectors of anxiety. Regardless of whether you’re working more or less, your nervous system is now plugged into a neurotic and hypersensitive globe-spanning information system that’s constantly pushing unnecessary things into your consciousness. Perversely, this information obesity actually makes us feel... See more
Brett Scott • Tech Doesn’t Make Our Lives Easier. It Makes Them Faster
Believing that AI will save time is like being a person in the late 1800s seeing their first car and thinking “oh how easy it’ll be to get to the meadow now!” People back then didn’t imagine that by the 1960s we’d be stuck in traffic jams for hours in mega-cities. Now apply this to AI. If we fast-forward a decade, it will have recalibrated the enti... See more
Brett Scott • Tech Doesn’t Make Our Lives Easier. It Makes Them Faster
We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn't make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff.
Brett Scott • Tech Doesn’t Make Our Lives Easier. It Makes Them Faster
We chase numbers and icons because they’re always available, and the chase is often so immersive that it keeps us from seeing where it leads, which is often far away from what we actually want. This can lead to what the evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman calls “counterfeit fitness”: the constant, momentary “wins” that come with playing digi... See more
Gurwinder • Why Everything Is Becoming a Game
There is consensus and cohesion within the crowds, but often not across them. Every crowd proclaimed itself the public, while it is merely a public.
Invisible Rulers
... See moreAlthough influencers are still closely associated with dance videos, e-commerce, and marketing, their role in shaping public opinion- especially around politics-is outsized. Influencers can harness attention, radiate trust, evoke emotion, and direct energy—all to great effect. They capitalize on atmospheric vibes and intuitions, giving people the r
"Clout" is the values-free currency of the always-online age — both a substitute for hard cash and a conduit to it. - Naomi Klein
The overall digital environment is dictated by tech companies with ruthlessly capitalist, expansionary motives, which do not provide the most fertile ground for culture. While the magazine fashion editor may periodically use their ability to pick out and promote a previously unheard voice, the algorithmic feed never will; it can only iterate on est
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